Play on female sexuality to jazz up Ljubljana theatre scene
Ljubljana, 3 December - A play titled this apple, made of gold by acclaimed playwright Simona Semenič is to premiere at the Ljubljana Cankarjev Dom arts centre on Thursday. The play, introducing a new genre into the Slovenian theatre arena, erotic drama, focuses on three women at various stages of life and their sexual desires.
Ljubljana
Playwright and performer Simona Semenič in 2018, as she receives the Prešeren Fund Prize for her work from the past two years.
Photo: Nebojša Tejić/STA
File photo
Semenič, an award-winning artist, has been nominated for the Grum Prize, the top national accolade for playwriting, for this particular play.
The emotional impetus for bringing the text to life was found in Raphael's famous painting The Three Graces, depicting three naked women holding an apple in their hands, said the director of the play, Primož Ekart, at today's press conference.
According to him, Semenič's erotic drama is not only a novelty on the Slovenian theatre scene, but also "a subversive political gesture" since it talks about women "who are not traumatised or victims or objects of the male perception of the world".
This apple, made of gold plays with the apple as a Christian symbol of sin, peeling away ages of repressing female sexuality, reads the play's programme.
The fruit picked from a tree of knowledge is no longer forbidden or a sin; it no longer conveys that pleasure is weakness or that a wish for human touch means inferiority - instead, the play provides a tasting of a juicy ode to pleasure.
Ekart added that the performance would confront the audience with their own prejudices while also portraying explicit sexual content in a viewer-friendly way.
The project is a collaboration between Cankarjev Dom, and the Drama and MGL theatres.